Private text to speech, with no cloud in the loop

Four things, and they're checkable rather than promises:

• On-device synthesis. The speech engine runs on your own hardware. If the voices work with the network off, your text isn't being sent out to be spoken.
• No account. An app that never asks who you are can't tie your reading to an identity. LoudReader has no sign-up, no login, and no profile.
• No content collection. LoudReader collects no personal data. Books, notes, highlights, and reading progress stay on your device. The privacy policy is two minutes long because there's almost nothing to disclose.
• Minimal network surface. The only network requests LoudReader makes are downloads you ask for: free books from the Project Gutenberg catalog, or an article link you paste in.

It isn't malice, it's architecture. A cloud TTS service synthesizes speech on its own servers, which means your text has to travel there. That's unavoidable physics of the design: to hear a contract read aloud by a cloud voice, you send the contract. What happens next depends on each provider's terms (retention, logging, processing location), which you have to read, trust, and re-check every time they change.

On-device TTS removes the question instead of answering it. There's no server-side copy to worry about because there's no server-side anything. For a novel this may not matter much; for a medical report, an unpublished manuscript, or a client's legal brief, it's the whole decision.

The airplane-mode test: switch off all connectivity and press play. An app that keeps narrating with no connection is generating speech locally, and there's no way to fake that. An app that stops, errors, or degrades is calling home to synthesize. LoudReader passes this test on both Mac and iPhone. It's the fastest honest answer to “is my text being uploaded?” that exists.

For a concrete, fact-checked example of the cloud column (pricing, word metering, sign-in requirements), see the LoudReader vs Speechify comparison.

LoudReader turns any EPUB, PDF, or article into an audiobook with natural offline voices, as native Mac and iPhone apps. Import a document and press play: a neural voice reads while each word highlights in the text, and your place is saved automatically. The free tier includes unlimited listening on every book, cover to cover, with no word quota. Private reading shouldn't be the expensive option. It also ships with 70,000+ free Project Gutenberg classics, and the same on-device narration works for PDFs on your iPhone and articles on your Mac.

An honest accounting, because the trade-off is real:

• Languages and voice variety. Cloud services generally offer dozens of languages and huge voice catalogs. LoudReader has 8 natural offline voices and is English-only for now (more languages are coming).
• Hardware. Running a neural engine locally takes modern silicon: LoudReader needs an Apple Silicon Mac (macOS 15+) or an iPhone/iPad on iOS 18+. Cloud TTS runs on anything with a browser.
• Extras. The cloud suites have AI summaries, voice cloning, and browser extensions. LoudReader deliberately doesn't.

If those outweigh privacy for your use, a cloud service is the rational choice. If what you read is sensitive, or you just dislike your reading being someone else's data, no-cloud is the only architecture that settles the question.